GNOME Day at Chile

October 2, 2006

I have been enough time without saying something in my BLOG, honestly i have had much work at the Office as in the University. However the GNOME Chile team has been working hard to organize the GNOME Day next November 11 at Universidad Católica del Maule in Talca, thanks to the support of the GNOME Foundation Fernando Herrera will be here that week to shares and hack with us and to motivate our public.

The GNOME Day will be part of the Encuentro Nacional de Linux, our national linux gathering, a 3 day conference. Last day will be devoted to GNOME. Also we’ll have a stand on the conference with a hacking table where people will see GNOME in action, volunteers there will show the Desktop and Development Platform.

By now we have a Call of Paper to select the talks. Also we’re working on the logistic for the Stand, this afternoon i’ll have a meeting with Leoncio Jimenez, he’s in charge for the Logistic at the conference, i hope to define the place for the Stand and the requirements for our hacking table (Table, chairs, plugs, Wire and Wireless Network).

For the local people who wants to volunteer there is a wiki page where we’re organizing this stuff. Also we have regular meetings at #gnome-chile channel in irc.gimp.org every Thursday at 22:30 PM, so please go there and join us!

Do it easy!

August 4, 2006

In several talks at GNOME meetings people asked me about the use of PyGTK and Python for the development for enterprise software, of course we use it in Galilea S.A. as our devel platform. However even if python is an “easy language” some GTK+ Widgets don’t, for sample gtk.TreeView and the models like gtk.ListStore or gtk.TreeStore. On the other hand there are easy widgets like gtk.Entry, that doesn’t have all the functionalities that this type of software requires and must be programmed, for sample Masks for data editing like Phone Numbres or Date Entries, the same for Combos and Compĺetions, etc.

The guys from Async have been developing a framework called Kiwi, Johan talk about it at GUADEC 06

A small sample using Kiwi

win = gtk.Window()

win.set_title('gtk.Entry subclass')

def cb(window, event):

    print 'fields', widget.get_field_text()

    gtk.main_quit()

win.connect('delete-event', cb)

 
widget = KiwiEntry()

widget.set_mask('000.000.000.000')

 
win.add(widget)

 
win.show_all()


gtk.main()

The magical result:

Of course this is a small sample about what kiwi can do for you, the framework is designed to implement MVC in a easy way, reducing the amount of code necessary to make those tricks that your application need to looks professional and easy to use, and if you mix it with an ORM like SQLObject and Gazpacho Designer you can be fine and drink a bear, since everything will be easier.

If you’re looking arround to find the tool to make your life easier then give a try to Kiwi!

Terrorism

July 17, 2006

I must to say it, i have friends in USA, i have friends in countries allied to USA, they are good people, i think that most of that people love the life and don’t agree with war. But when i hear people talking about terrorism and saying that people in the middle east are terrorist and evildoers to justify what is unjustifiable, i must to ask do you remeber wich is only one country in the human history who used atomic weapons against civil population?, was Irak, Iran, Pakistan, Agfanistan or Lebanon?, Until today we remeber what nazis did, and i hope that we never forget it. I hope we never forget what USA did at II World War, when they strike Japan with atomics bombs.

But the USA also have attacked civilians, his government also has committed terrorist acts around the world, and even so the civilized world is not able to condemn it in the same way. Please do not misinterpret to me but if you think that during last century USA has played the role of guardian of the humanity then you don’t want to see the reality. Deaths and murders have existed from both sides, to me, everyone is guilty, to fight we need two fighters and in both sides we found innocent people and with good will, but also there are anxious evildoers. Please think about it. If you don’t like the war, if you don’t like innocent people dying then stop the support to goverments who wants war, USA is one of them as well other countries in middle east and arround the world, war is no good for everybody, and always there is an alternative to fight. And if you think that i’m supporting Al Qaeda, ETA, IRA or another kind of violence, then you don’t understand me.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. — Isaac Asimov

Floods in Chile

July 14, 2006

After one week of sun and heat in Vilanova, returning to Chile was quite different. Here we have a strong winter, nevertheless during this week the situation get worst, the floods ain the country was serious, with 15 dead people. Concepción, the city where German lives wasthe most affected. I talked yesterday with him and he got some flood in his house and job, luckyly his wife and him are without personal problems. Thanks to the people who have asked for the situation in Chile.

Flood in Concepción

After GUADEC 2006

July 5, 2006

GUADEC 2006 was awesome, definitively the best thing in GNOME is its community. Kudos for all you guys.
On Saturday before taking the flight German and i go to Barcelona, there we could buy some stuff and gifts, the city is very pretty and have impressive places like the Sagrada Familia. I changed my feeling about the Catalans, luckyly people were much more pleasant here and that I want it to emphasize.

The flight back to Chile was not very comfortable, however i’m getting used to the 14 hours of trip so I did not have problems with that.
About the community, during the GUADEC I had the opportunity to talk with a lot of people about the experience of the users and developers group in GNOME Chile, From my point of view the local user groups are a resource who we must empower and use it since it is one of the sources that can bring more users to our project.
Therefore I hope to be able to initiate a discussion in the foundation’s mailing list to talk about this subject, the board is interested in this situation and for them will be very useful if the local groups give the necessary information about our activities and of as they can help us. Also we can share experiences about events and other activities

One week in Vilanova

June 30, 2006

I’ve been one week in Vilanova i la Geltru, I have had several visions of the culture of this side of Spain, nevertheless in general people are not as friendly as in other parts that I have visited (Madrid, A Coruña or Santiago), They bothers if you spoken to them in Castilian, so some times is better to do it in English, the amused thing of this is that although they do not have much esteem by the rest of the Spaniards but the celebrate the national football team. Anyway there’s people like Quim and other guys who really rocks, so I cannot generalize the situation.

Yesterday Murray show me Glom and some really nice features, this is one of the software that we really need on the desktop, even if it’s not too stable yet, looks promising. He mentioned that needs a tool to configure PostgreSQL for first time, even to install it if it’s not on the system, also to configure the service to accept TCP/IP and to create a new user on the database. Well this is a tool that i need for Gestor so i can hit two birds with one stone.

Today is the last day a UPC, not to much people here.

Yestarday i spent few hours at GUADEC in a meeting with Javi Fernandez from Igalia, we share ideas an experience working on this kind of applications. Their software is a complete solution, well designed and stable, by now they’re trying to build a community of people using and building applications based on Fisterra, really awesome software and platform!.

Was really nice to talk about similar experinces, so for the people out there now you know it!, there exists solutions for you company, you can get free and awesome software to run your bussiness.
And that’s not the only one choice that you have, there is Stoq at Brazil and Tiny ERP at Belgium.

These technologies are based on GNOME, and allow to customize the software to make new developments. For sure we should marketing these tools.

GUADEC has different moments, in some cases the great developers/rock stars have few opportunities to share with the rest of the assistants, for some people it is difficult to go and join them at a bar, or going at night to eat or drink where pro hackers go, some times is very expensive for people from Latin America spend 20 or 30 Euros at a day, so there’s no much chance to share and talk with the “big ones”.

Well for that reason we have partys/meetings like the Fluendo’s Beach Party last night, where everybody could be together without concerning the differences that can exist between pro and students, developed and undeveloped countries or whatever.

Thanks guys for making this possible, this is one of the reasons why GUADEC is awesome.

GUADEC 2006, here i’m

June 24, 2006

Finally I am here, was a quite pleasant trip from Santiago to Madrid only 12 hours. On landing I didn’t find people going to GUADEC on terminal B, thus I decided to use one of the orange shirts from last conference and to go to take the train to Vilanova, the strategy worked good soon i found David and John there,

after making some questions we arrived to Vilanova, where we meet Luis and Enrique who were waiting for the bus,

was not much problem except for the quite long trip that makes the bus until its final destiny

Later we join other guys for Sangría and other nice food

Today i’m working in the Press room, my first task was to help Jossete with here Palet of books, a lot of boxes, she gave me a Python Cookbook copy for my help, so i’m very fortunate.

Finally a shot of the first people hacking here, this is just starting.

What the national teams of Ecuador and Argentina done demonstrates that that old way to play soccer, playing the ball with affection, doing good passess, and attacking ever continues being the most attractive things in this sport. We still are waiting for Brasil, but i’m sure they’ll show what “jogo bonito” is. In Europe Spain is playing good, other teams don’t play to much, just run over the ball, long balls and defense. Looks for a good world cup for South Americans teams, let’s look if England, Germany, Holland, Italy and Czech Republic can improve their perfomance, playing not only to win 3 points but for making fun on the field.

BTW, what style of football we’ll play at FreeFA World Cup at GUADEC?